The primary purpose of the Fund for Latino Scholarship is to encourage and support the recruitment, retention and promotion of Latino/a political scientists. A secondary goal is to support research on Latino/a politics.

Yanira G. Rivas Pineda: The Latino Fund grant that I was a recipient of was used to cover my flight expenses to San Salvador, El Salvador. I was able to travel for 10 days to San Salvador during August to conduct remaining interviews that needed to take place in order for me to finalize a research project that I started in February of this year focusing on the state of democracy in El Salvador. A 10-day trip was unfortunately not enough as I had scheduled eight interviews …While I was not able to complete all scheduled interviews the ones I did manage to conduct were extremely helpful and will help me finalize the project in the next few weeks.

Me being able to travel to El Salvador to complete the interviews means that I can now finalize my research project. I have already submitted two conference proposals pertaining to this research project and plan to transform the research project into a publication. One of the main goals of the fund is to encourage and support the recruitment, retention, and promotion of Latina political scientists, and me being able to finalize this project means that I can start presenting my own research in conferences and start publishing, thus moving me closer to a career in academia.

The 2016 Fund for Latino Scholarship Recipients will be announced in July 2016.